Millions of households throughout the world spend billions of dollars each year on their pets. The American Pet Product Manufacturers Association (APPMA) regularly conducts a National Pet Owners Survey. In its most recent survey for 2011-2012, the APPMA estimated that there were 377.41 million pets in the United States, with 164.6 million or 43.6% of them being cats (86.4 M) or dogs (78.2 M). The total spending on pets according to the survey was $50.96 billion and is expected to rise nearly two billion dollars when its next survey is conducted. Of that, $25.18 billion was spent on supplies, over the counter medicine and vet care. If we extrapolate those figures, roughly $10.98 billion of the $25.18 billion is spent on cats and dogs.
Dog diabetes is a relatively common dog health issue that all too often goes undetected until an emergency occurs. While only about 1 in 500 dogs are diagnosed, some estimates show that as many as 1 in 100 dogs have diabetes. This means that about 782,000 registered dogs required diabetic treatment in the US.
The above-presented numbers indicate that blood glucose monitoring for dogs and cats has a solid market-based foundation.
Until recently, there have not been any methods and/or devices specifically designed to provide accurate non-invasive measurements of the blood glucose level in domesticated animals including dogs and cats. Devices developed for monitoring the human blood glucose level have been used instead, with a slight modification of the peripheral members of the instruments and measurement procedures. From a technological point of view, all existing methods for the blood glucose spot measurement or blood glucose curve building are either invasive (clinic blood test, clinic or home test using electro-chemical blood measuring devices like One-Touch Ultra™-relatively accurate; accuracy is affected by stress) or inaccurate (urine test).
All known approaches related to domesticated animals require collecting certain amounts of some biological material, not necessarily a blood sample, e.g., urine, saliva or tear liquid. Regardless of the kind of biological material used, each of these substances can be obtained by sampling that suggests a human interaction with the animal. In particular, a sample collecting container should be physically removed from contacting the animal for further analysis of its content (U.S. Pat. No. 5,139,023). A very few methods and methods-corresponding technologies can be named for obtaining information about the blood glucose level in domesticated animals that hypothetically do not require sampling. These techniques may include measuring the tissue's electrical conductivity, compressibility and thermal diffusivity successfully applied in the GlucoTrack™ product of Integrity Applications, Inc., electromagnetic absorption constant (US Pat. Pub. No. 20130289370), absorption of laser/infrared radiation (U.S. Pat. No. 7,729,734), magneto-resonance absorption (U.S. Pat. No. 7,635,331), photo-acoustics (U.S. Pat. No. 5,941,821) and many others. All these measurement methods are complicated by practically overall hairiness of the most of domesticated animals.
In-clinic stress may cause blood glucose to be elevated making it difficult to determine the true blood glucose level
In order to get the most accurate readings, blood glucose monitoring is best done under the pet's typical daily conditions. This is usually the home environment where feeding, exercise, and stress levels are normal. Blood glucose values obtained in the clinic often do not accurately reflect the values of a typical day, complicating the regulation process.
The purpose of the present invention is presenting a method and at least one conceptual design of an apparatus for accurate non-invasive measurement of the domesticated animal's blood glucose level causing no stress to the animal oblivious to the fact that the measurement is being conducted.